Students map global imperialism; rev up transit campaign

BROOKLYN, October 30—At today’s Progressive Labor Party study a group of Kingsborough Community College students and faculty, dozens of sharp questions were raised in this multiracial gathering of women and men, trying understand the world from a communist perspective and to making plans and change it. Our topic today was ‘Imperialism and fascism,’ part of a regular series on different topics, as well as evaluating our progress and giving leadership to the ongoing anti racist struggles at KCC.
      Mapping imperialist rivalry
The aspect of the study group that generated the most discussion involved a large map of the world, and mapping out the current U.S., Chinese, Russian and regional imperialist rivalries.
For example, the students from Yemen noted that while the U.S. is involved in bombing both Syria and Yemen, the U.S. media only talks about Syria when it makes the U.S. look good and Russia look bad. Yemen—with thirteen million workers (five million of them children) at imminent risk of death by starvation—is one of the biggest capitalist disasters today.
Even from the partial truths the capitalist media cherry picks for us to see, it can all seems very confusing. One of the struggles we had in this study group was clearly connecting the big imperialist states like the U.S. and Russia with their rival “junior partners,” Saudi Arabia and Iran. Unlike the early capitalist colonial empires of Britain, Belgium, Spain, France and others, the U.S., Russian and Chinese imperialists do not plant their flags over entire continents and say “this is ours! Everyone here is a colonial subject!”
Instead, the capitalist class of today finds local bosses in these countries to support, or, if necessary, fund “proxy wars” and fund local capitalist-led armies to fight on their behalf. One famous example discussed was the U.S.’ creation and funding of the mujahideen terrorists like Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s. These were their proxies for fighting Russia, who eventually turned on their U.S. masters.
   Global politics are local...
Kingsborough students, staff and faculty have learned an enormous amount about how the college and capitalism actually function by organizing to fight, and the fightback has raised increasing questions about the capitalist system. We’re told we live in a “democracy” with “rights.” But when students and faculty mobilize against racist administrators like Michael Goldstein, why are the racists protected, and two dozen faculty threatened with legal action?
The latest anti-racist struggle on campus is a petition to the MTA to improve the utterly atrocious public transportation service to our campus. This petition campaign was developed and launched by students active in several clubs and supported by KCC’s student government. It’s already reached almost one  1,000 students, and will reach thousands more by the end of the semester. Why is public transportation so poor that hundreds of students are forced, every day, to stuff themselves into unsafe buses?
Here we talked about the relationship between sharpening imperialist rivalry and growing fascism. Fascism is when the capitalists of a country are weakened and unstable, they resort primarily to rule by force.Democratic illusions weaken, the working class gets fewer crumbs, more violence like racist police terror and worsening living conditions. And as the capitalist class disciplines its own inner factions, so will they attempt to further, and “discipline” us with more racist terror and nationalist politics, in order to prepare us for war.
...and local politics can go global
What the bosses fear most is an organized working class with antiracist and communist politics. Some of the young women who led and were involved in the fight against racist Michael Goldstein put it best: “Everyone knew about this racism, but no one wanted to talk about it or do anything about it because they were scared. We decided we had to.”
Another said, “That fight needed to happen. We’re a school of international and immigrant students. The struggle gave us unity and we wouldn’t have that unity if we didn’t start fighting. Now people are talking. The real enemy isn’t Trump or Goldstein, and they need to go, but it’s really the billionaires behind the closed doors whose names you don’t know and never read about who allow it.”
Everyone agreed to meet again in two weeks for our next discussion. We also agreed to hear more reports on the situation of students, faculty and workers, and discuss how we can coordinate and give sharper leadership.
We may seem a long way from revolution at the moment,but more and more workers and youth are reading CHALLENGE, thinking about communism and learning how to organize and fight. One young PL student, while being new to the Party, is already learning how to build communist leadership among other students. And all of us are learning to stick together, stick it out, and to figure out how to fight back no matter what. With a slowly but surely growing movement like this, we can’t lose.